He’s here to save us all from “rampant government spending.” Former prime minister Stephen Harper stuck his oar into Canada’s economic confusion last week. In a podcast, Harper warned Canadians of government spending “without end or purpose” as not being able to hasten recovery. Since the current spending is in aid of maintaining the economy until the end of the pandemic, we can only assume that Mr. Harper was agreeing with the current strategy of the liberal government.
To confuse things, conservative finance critic MP Ed Fast thinks the Trudeau government spending is “reckless” and “the problem is getting worse.” In addition, the conservative’s unofficial finance critic MP Pierre Poilievre is using his better produced ZOOM comments to complain that all these pandemic payouts are going to bankrupt us.
In contrast to all this gloom and doom, we can report that Loblaws had another record quarter of profits thanks to the rapidly escalating prices for groceries. The oil companies are also doing their best to cut global warming by raising gasoline prices at the pump by about 30 per cent. Luckily, we have the Bank of Canada ready and willing to nip this inflationary activity in the bud. And since the bank’s only instrument for redressing inflation is to raise interest rates, it might not be wise to awaken that spectre.
But while Stephen Harper talks the talk and walks the walk of a tax-cutting conservative, he has been known to opt for deficit-financed stimulus packages when all else fails. And all else does tend to fail.
Stimulus, as the word infers, is intended to cause other sources of funding to want to get into the opportunities, the stimulus creates. For example, the current Canada Emergency Response Benefit (CERB) payments are stimulating service industry wages to rise to a living wage level that could entice people away from the government largess.
And, contrary to the gloom and doom of conservative leader Erin O’Toole and his two finance critics, the world will not end as more stimulus is applied to rebuilding our economy. Even Stephen Harper could explain that.
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Copyright 2021 © Peter Lowry
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